ENG 322: Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Course Objectives

The authors we will read this semester lived in a century full of optimism and despair, of unbounded possibilities and intractable problems. The new nation of America was a land of freedom and opportunity for people from all different parts of the Old World, and yet it was a place of slavery and oppression. America was a new Eden, nature’s nation, where people in contact with the earth would be loosed from centuries of cultural baggage and set free to worship God and pursue true happiness. Or was it? Each of these authors addresses questions at the core of the American experiment: What is freedom? What are we free for? Over the course of this semester, we’ll explore the way various authors attempted to form democratic readers, readers free to participate in religious, political, and scientific interpretations of authoritative texts.

Ideally, as we read through these texts, we will accomplish three related goals: provide you with a historical and cultural framework through which to understand the particular, nineteenth-century American texts we read together; train you to read and interpret these texts; and teach you to make careful arguments about these texts. At the end of this course, you should have a historical paradigm, a set of analytical tools, and the rhetorical sophistication to read, analyze, and think about whatever literary works you encounter in the future. Along the way, you just might discover why these skills are important, and why God used the forms of literature, stories and language, to tell us about himself.

In order to accomplish these objectives, you will need to carefully read the assigned reading before each class and turn in well-written reflection writings. This should help you come to class prepared to discuss the text. Your reflection writings and our class discussions should prepare you to craft a creative, insightful final project.

Course Documents

Please upload your pre-class reflections to the appropriate folder here. In order to upload files, you’ll need to select “Join folder to receive updates” on the right side of the screen. You can also find all of the assigned articles in this folder.